


Masquerading as a Man with a Reason

by Marauder_Girl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Also could not be Wincest, Angst, Could be Wincest, Gen, Hurt! Dean, Hurt! Sam, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-23 02:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marauder_Girl/pseuds/Marauder_Girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you just have enough because your old methods don't work--not anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Masquerading as a Man with a Reason

 

You torture yourself incessantly every night, begging and praying and dare you admit it, crying but you hold yourself together on the outside. You smile and laugh and flirt with top heavy waitresses because  _that is what you do._ You give the same spiel to everyone, keep your head down, and you do your job. Sure some days you might just  **C R A C K**  but the next morning you're pulled back together again and right as rain because someone has to be okay in this shithole of a world, and there are people that  _need_ you and maybe they won't if you aren't the epitome of everything they want, so you try and you try and try again. Failure is  **NOT**  an option because failure means that you've given up and you're done and that everything is okay but it's  **NOT**  so you wake up and struggle for another day. Because who ever heard of life being good, right? It might have been ( _could have been too, except it was_   **YOUR** _fault that everything happened and you don't deserve to be happy again)_ but that seems so long ago, back when family still meant family and there wasn't so much blood on your hands. Back when the Earth still turned right on the axis and grass was green and the sky was cloudless. Back when everything was  _perfect_. Only you _know_ that what seems perfect is only black on the inside--more dead than alive. Just. Like.  **YOU.**

You’re afraid for the fate of the world if you can’t save it. You’re afraid you’ll go back to those dark days before you knew any better. You’re afraid of what you’re dad would think. You’re afraid of what your _mom_ would think. You’re afraid of what Bobby was thinking, afraid that he didn’t care, just pretended, that it was _all_ a **LIE**.You’re afraid for the people you’ve left behind, the ones who knew, and who didn’t, the ones left blind, and those left in the dust. You’re afraid _for_ your brother. You’re afraid **OF** your brother. You’re afraid that maybe Castiel sees too much, knows too much, and somehow that thought just makes you laugh cruelly to yourself. You’re not so much afraid for your future, as you’re afraid if you’re going to live to see the next minute. You’d be afraid for your friends, _if_ you had any that bothered to stick around. You’re afraid you’ve reached the end.

But you know a lot of things too. Know how to clean a gun quicker than any other person you could meet (except perhaps your brother, you’re **tied** and doesn’t that word leave a _funny_ taste in your mouth). You know how to lie, and to charm, how to survive with barely anything, and you know how to play Doctor better than most Doctors you’ve ever met. You know all you can and you still learn more, because maybe if you had _more_ knowledge, if you had _more_ answers to this crazy, messed up, life you’re living you could actually stand to look at yourself in the mirror.

Instead you avoid the mirror, avoid looking at the cracks. Avoid the dance of pretending you’re okay even to yourself. Because that mask may be on 24/7 but it doesn’t have to be. You could lose control. Hell, _you have._ There have been times where you’ve gone **one step too f a r**. Where you pushed instead of pulled, and yelled instead of whispered. Where you’ve completely lost your shit so utterly and completely, that you feel like you will never be made whole again, and you’re crying and lost inside, but **_GOD DAMMIT_** you pull it together boy, because this is just a lapse not real life. This is not the Winchester Way.  

And because you’re a Winchester, because you come from this _“noble breed”_ you’re outside the lines. You don’t follow the law, the law follows you. You’ve seen more, done more, and fixed more than any **law abiding** citizen would dare to. You lock things down so deep inside and they just build the foundation to the guard around your heart. You don’t talk, because _no chick flick moments_. You just bottle it all up, but you **know** one day it’s going to explode! (like a volcano or maybe like a bottle of soda that you just shook up before opening just to hear your brother laugh). It’s **NOT** a problem—it’s a life choice. Even if that life choice is so far off the grid that even Frank, that old paranoid bastard couldn’t have found it. But like you said, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter because even though you’re breaking and dying inside there are still some good things. Not many, not anymore ( _good things always die, that’s what they do._ ) because you’ve grown up and realized that nothing is strictly good (but there are things that are strictly **bad**.). The Impala is always good, always home, no matter where you are. Old rock music is still kind of good too, it reminds you of the days when it was just you and your brother and your dad, roaring down a highway blasting your dad’s music, and he would smile once he realized that you and your brother would sing along to keep from being bored. Sometimes your brother can be a good thing. Same with Cas. There are still some good things but not many because this is life, and you’re in the fast lane, the lane to death at the age of 40, the lane that kills you while you’re sleeping, cold and silent, calculating like a cat, but it’s not a real murder, because _it’s just life right?_

But now you’re cold and you’re tired. You can’t go to sleep at night without remembering all of the screw ups that you’ve ever had, all the embarrassing moments, that ones that kill you on the inside. You can’t sleep without remembering that Death knows your name and you’re on his list for someday, and it used to terrify you but not anymore, because at this point you’ve died so many times you wonder if it’s even worth coming back.  

And you don’t think it is. Not anymore. So you crank the music, hear the blood **pounding** in your ears, and you gun the Impala, and bury those feelings of doubt. Because you’ve got the family business to tend to, and you can rest when it’s done.

_**{Fin}** _

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic could apply to either Sam OR Dean which is why I was careful to use "You" and not any specifics to either of them. It could be slight Wincest if you squint but it's not specifically. 
> 
> Comments will be appreciated, and I assume if you're reading this, you read my story, so thank you. 
> 
> (I do not own Supernatural or anything affiliated with it.)


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